Ibn al-Athir

Izz al-Din Abu'l-Hasan Ali ibn Muhammad al-Jazari, known as Ibn al-Athir, was a Sunni historian and hadith scholar (a specialist in the reported sayings and deeds of the Prophet Muhammad) of the Zangid and Ayyubid era. He is best remembered for al-Kamil fi'l-ta'rikh ("The Complete History"), a chronicle of the world from creation down to his own day that remains one of the most cited Arabic histories of the medieval Near East, including its account of the Crusades and the early Mongol invasions.

Sources report that he was born in 555 AH (1160 CE) at Jazirat ibn Umar on the Tigris (today Cizre, in Turkey), into a family that served the Zangid rulers of Mosul; two of his brothers, Majd al-Din and Diya al-Din, were also noted scholars. Around the age of twenty-one he settled with his father in Mosul, which became his lifelong base. He travelled to Baghdad, accompanied Saladin's forces in Syria for a time, and spent periods in Damascus and Aleppo before returning to Mosul, where he died in 630 AH (1233 CE).

In Islamic belief he was a transmitter of tradition, not a religious authority of the first rank; later biographers count him a Shafi'i in law and Ash'ari in creed, though such labels are how the tradition classified him rather than matters he debated himself. Besides al-Kamil he compiled Usd al-ghaba, a dictionary of the Prophet's Companions; al-Lubab, on Arab genealogy; and al-Bahir, a history of the Zangid atabegs (Turkic military governors) of Mosul.